Review Policy for Jenna / Westveil Books

Hey there! My name is Jenna and you may know me from my extensive catalogue of reviews on this blog and other sites. I decided in May 2020 every review I write will go up on Goodreads if the book is available there for posting. Most favourable reviews will also end up here on the blog, and many will be cross-posted to retailers such as Amazon (CA), Chapters Indigo, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble.

If you’re interested in requesting a review, continue reading and then contact me!

I do welcome contact from authors, publicists, blog tour organizers, etc. regarding potential reviews. Please use the email address westveilbooks@gmail.com only. This is not my NetGalley or send-to-kind address, so please expect to be provided with a different address if I accept your review request and you need to send it this way.

Before contacting me about reviewing a book, please consider the following:

  • I am primarily interested in reading: Science Fiction & Fantasy umbrella genres for adult and YA audiences, Gothic Horror, “weird” horror, LGBTQIA+ topics, Canadian topics & authors, and historical non-fiction.
  • I am 100% not interested in books that are primarily romance genre, books with spicy romance elements, religious topics, self-help books, anything with heavy body horror, or end-of-the-world topics.
  • If I accept your book, I do not promise any specific review timeline (unless I am committing to a tour date,) I do not promise a positive review, and I do not promise that a review will be posted at all.
  • I may offer to spotlight a book I’m not interested in reading/don’t have time to read before an important date, but I am not interested in being contacted for a spotlight if there is no option to review.
  • I can review eBooks, audiobooks, and print books if you can send me a copy in one of these formats.
    • eBooks: I will accept ePub files, send-to-kindle (documents), invited to read on NetGalley or Edelwiss+, or platform giftcards to buy an eBook copy on Canadian book retailers. As a Canadian, I cannot accept gifted books from the Kindle store at this time, unfortunately. Please do not send me your formatted printing file PDFs as these do not convert to eBook formats well.
    • Audiobooks: I do have a Spotify account, which is where many audio ARC platforms I’ve used in the past seem to have migrated, so I am able to accept audiobook copies there. I can also accept Audible US or Audible UK codes, and I can be invited to listen on NetGalley. Please do not send me the audio files in an email/download link.
    • Print books: I am willing to accept print books mailed to me in Newfoundland, Canada. I can put titles on my Amazon wish list if you would like to send them that way, and I am willing to pick up at bookstores local to me if you want to place an order that way. Chapters Indigo/Coles is an option.
  • As of June 2025 I am no longer accepting auto-additions to blog tours, which means I will only be reviewing books I actually want to review. I reserve the right to not post reviews in conjunction with tours, even if I didn’t finish reading in a reasonable amount of time to notify that I’m not reviewing, rather than provide a minimum star rating as per tour policy if I don’t agree with that rating. (Not that many tour-related 3.5 star reviews from before this date range deserved a flat 3.)

How I Review Books

I stick to a 5-star rating system congruent with Goodreads, Amazon, etc., and I am willing to post reviews to any additional retailer sites as requested by the book sender, so long as a Canadian who has not necessarily made a recent purchase there can post a review.

My reviews are always honest and pertain only to the book itself, not the author or publisher. No amount of bribery will increase my rating if I do not believe the book deserves it. Nothing said in my review should be taken as judgement or an attack on the author or publisher, nor do I mean to offend any authors, publishers, or fans of books that I do not rate favourably.

If I do not finish (DNF) a book I was asked to review, I will still post a short DNF review on Goodreads for the benefit of potential readers, and I will also post to NetGalley if that is where I got my copy. DNF reviews will be clearly denoted as such, and will outline how far I got and why I chose to stop reading. These reviews will be written tastefully and can still be as high as 2 stars. If the author/requestor asks me to stop reading or disregard before reading (this has happened once, the book was going back to the editor) I will honour this and not post a review of any sort with the exception of a non-review post on NetGalley if applicable to get the stats credit for “finishing” an accepted ARC. I am willing to beta read, but do not post reviews based on beta reading as I expect that the book has gone through further edits since my read through. Please provide a finished copy if you want me to review a book I beta read for.

4.5-5 Stars

I couldn’t put this book down! I absolutely loved it, and I want everyone else to read it too. Although it does not have to be flawless from a technical standpoint, it did not contain a distracting amount of problems.

A 4.5 may be awarded if it’s so close to a 5 but there’s a small problem that I feel compelled to highlight, or if I was genuinely undecided between 4 and 5 and the Goodreads average is closer to a 5. 4.5 may be rounded up or down for Goodreads and other sites that don’t allow half stars, and I’ll generally just pick the option that’s closest to the book’s current average on that individual site.

4 Stars

I enjoyed this book a lot, and I am likely to recommend it to the right audience. It isn’t a 5 because:
a) it didn’t truly grab me and make me turn the next 50 pages at any point,
b) the beginning was slow or otherwise had me thinking it wasn’t going to be my cup of tea (at least 20 pages / first two chapters), or
c) it has numerous or significant issues/errors that pulled me out of the experience.

3.5 Stars

Up to June 2025: Some tour companies require a 3.5 minimum, probably because most reviewers will then round this up to 4 on Goodreads, so this is the rating you will see on books I read for tours that I enjoyed but cannot sincerely rate a full 4 stars. I will round whichever way feels most appropriate to the individual book. See 3 stars below.

July 2025 and onward: 3.5 stars awarded after my shift in focus are sincere 3.5 ratings, neither a 3 nor a 4, and may be rounded either way on review sites that only accept whole number ratings.

3 Stars

This book is good, and I will keep it in mind if asked for recommendations from the book’s target demographic. It wasn’t necessarily my cup of tea, or it never really grabbed me at any point, and I do not expect to re-read it.

2 Stars

A book may be rated 2-stars for either of the following reasons:
a) While it wasn’t a bad book, it really, truly wasn’t my cup of tea and didn’t grip me at all, OR it is an already-published book that has an unedited draft quantity of technical errors and developmental issues throughout.
b) I DNF’d because it falls outside of my “willing to read” categories or contains one of my “will not continue reading” show-stopper issues, but I don’t believe it’s a bad book for what it is and who is meant to read it. This review will still include some positives and suggest an ideal reader.

I generally don’t award 2.5 stars. A book is a 2 (not something I’m going to recommend) or a 3 (something I’ll recommend selectively.)

1-1.5 Stars

1 is the lowest rating I can give on sites like Goodreads, Amazon, etc. and have the sites recognize that I am indeed giving it a rating. As such, this should be considered a 0. Either this book is entirely unreadable in my opinion, or it promotes unforgivable acts and ideologies such as racism or rape culture.

1.5 Represents a book that could have otherwise been a 2-3 but has a persistent racist, sexist or homophobic theme that I’m not sure was intentional or not. (As of June 2021 I have reviewed one book at 1.5 stars to date for what felt like a possibly unintended racist attitude throughout an otherwise mediocre historical fantasy that forgot women exist and would have been a 2.)

No Rating

Sometimes I DNF with the intent to come back and give the book another try, and in this case I won’t rate the book but will probably leave a brief note in place of a review explaining what happened. For example, I eagerly awaited a library loan for the audiobook copy of Meet Cute Diary only to find I could not stand the narrator and had no hope of sitting through it for 7 hours. I left an unrated note explaining this, as it will be part of my review later on and I wanted to mark the dates of the reading attempt in my history. When I get back around to the eBook or print version, the mention of that initial DNF and reason will remain in the review.

No Review

If I haven’t left a review yet, you can assume one of three things has occurred:

1. I haven’t finished (or started) it yet. I’m still going to read and review!

2. I’ve read it (and recorded it as such on Goodreads) but still need to attach a review. I try to only leave leisure reads in this sort of limbo and not do this to requested reviews.

3. It deserves a 1 or 2 but I’ve elected to pretend I didn’t see it. I’m doing you a favour. Pushing for the review to go out won’t make it a 3. Re-requesting the review as if we’ve never met will guarantee a 1 star that likely breaks my “I don’t comment negatively on the author in reviews” rule.